The real winner in the trio of watchable Tuesday comedies on Fox was the list of guest stars. Between “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “New Girl” and “The Mindy Project,” we had a cavalcade of stars joining the regular cast members.
- Artemis from “It’s Always Sunny” provided psychic advice to the Brooklyn cops
- Angela from “The Office” played a rule-breaking teacher on “New Girl,” which had three quality guest stars
- Booger from the “Revenge of the Nerd” movies was Jess’ principal.
- London Tipton (the Zack and Cody shows from Disney) returned as Winston’s love interest
- Kris Humphries and Bill Hader (more of an occasional character than a guest star) joined Danny’s group of single guys in “The Mindy Project.” Humphries had two quick scenes and killed it.
- And we saw the end of James Franco’s brief guest run on “The Mindy Project.”
I don’t know what all of this means in the general scheme of these three shows, but it helped make the night enjoyable. Once again, I found Mindy the best of the three shows even though I enjoyed all three. They wrapped up Franco’s arc pretty neatly, allowing Mindy to jump back into the daily routine of the practice. Morgan provided some pretty great moments while Mindy stepped up with the whipped cream bikini scene and some of the bar comedy. The ensemble is really start to gel, making me really excited for the rest of the season. Better yet, the writing staff is making the quick jokes (“In that case, be a gentleman, call him a Welshman and move on”) that get to the point quickly and move on. That’s what will keep me tuning in.
The police crew in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” isn’t quite there, but signs are emerging that this will rank as another Mike Schur triumph. The tension between Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher can really provide some great comedy. Even when Samberg had a chance to go too crazy with the focus he brought to compiling his report, he dialed it back just in time to keep the joke fresh. He talked about glitter instead of actually using glitter. But he had a great pretentious pose for his “About the Author” section. They are starting off the block strong.
In between, “New Girl” made another stride back toward the quality it brought to the screen last year. The whole Jess-Nick thing obviously presented a big challenge for the writers, and this week may provide the first step of getting past the awkwardness. Nick was just her boyfriend, there was no roommate tension between the two of them. I hope they find a balance between the two realities in the future. And of course Nick was a hacky-sack star (or just thought he was) back in the day. I agree with Alan Sepinwall that Winston’s default personality has become crazy person and kind of like it. They started to do some of this last year and have turned it into the more specific kind of crazy they have assigned Nick and Schmidt. As far as Schmidt’s love triangle, they need to just end it. The scenario didn’t have a ton of laughs to begin with, and I don’t think they can find any more.
I love this 90-minute block.